


Friendship is Magic

by Innwich



Series: The Marvelous Misadventures of Harley Quinn (One-Shots) [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Shazam! | Captain Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Magic, S.T.A.R. Labs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22757287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: Harley Quinn’s totally boring night at S.T.A.R. Labs took a magical turn when it was interrupted by the world-famous stage magician Zatanna and her pint-sized assistant Billy Batson!AKA the one where Harley was magically roped into an escape attempt.
Relationships: Billy Batson & Harleen Quinzel, Harleen Quinzel & Zatanna Zatara
Series: The Marvelous Misadventures of Harley Quinn (One-Shots) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1480052
Comments: 3
Kudos: 67





	Friendship is Magic

“You shoulda listened when I toldja to duck.” Harley hooted with laughter, slinging her rubber chicken over her shoulder. The brick in the rubber chicken was a hefty weight against her back. “Get it? ‘Cause I had a rubber _chicken_ but I toldja to _duck_!” 

It didn’t get a chuckle out of Mr. Concussion Head, who was doing his best impression of a beached starfish on the floor. Harley tickled him under his armpits. Made that a _drunken_ beached starfish.

“Meh. You guys are no fun. You’re worse than B-Man.” Harley stepped over the bodies of the five other chumps that had been knocked out by her knockout gas. “At least B-Man lasts long enough to hear my jokes.”

Harley hoped the cabbie waiting for her in front of the building hadn’t driven off yet. She had broken three arms and six thumbs (not hers) just to find out where the plants were kept. Apparently, she should have taken a left turn instead of a right turn in the lobby. Whoopsie.

Harley stripped off the stolen S.T.A.R. Labs lab coat and the stolen S.T.A.R. Labs security uniform and the stolen Pizza hut delivery uniform that she was wearing over her clothes. According to Ivy’s super-credible and super-roofied inside source, the Metropolis S.T.A.R. Labs facility had sent truckloads of boring old archive boxes to Gotham so they had room to expand their labs in Metropolis, including samples of plants that were from as far back as the Ice Age and as far away as outer space.

Ivy’s birthday was coming up, and from how much Ivy had gushed about S.T.A.R. Labs, Harley thought Ivy had been talking about Disneyland. Well, S.T.A.R. Labs Land would be getting a one-star rating from madloveHQ1992 on TripAdvisor tonight. ‘Nice and clean, but there ain’t enough bathrooms and the staff don’t laugh at my jokes. Do NOT recommend.’

It was easy to find the archive room once Harley knew where to look. A heavy lead-lined door bearing the words ‘ARCHIVE ROOM’ stood at the very end of the hallway. A card reader was installed next to the door. Harley took out a key card she had stolen off of a lab nerd, and tapped it against the card reader.

Harley had worked up a sweat by the time she propped Dr. Lardass up against the door, and tapped his key card against the archive room’s card reader. She forced his eye open and squished his face against the retina scanner.

An electronic voice greeted them, “Good evening, Dr. McKinley.”

The door swung open. The good doctor fell forward with the door and slumped across the doorway. 

Harley was almost sad that she had broken into S.T.A.R. Labs so easily. She didn’t even have a chance to use her C4 yet. There were no alarms blaring and no bank tellers screaming and no lil’ kids with lil’ capes trying to kick her butt. Harley had had more fun robbing Bruce Wayne at a dinner party in Ritz-Carlton. Mr. Playgirl Cover had slipped and shoved Humpty’s shiny bald head into a bowl of hot cream soup. That had been _hilarious_!

Harley stepped into the pitch black room, and-

-was sitting on her bum on a cold concrete floor?

“Um, is that supposed to happen?” said a boy in the dark.

And then someone lit a candle to Harley’s right, which was weird because she didn’t see anyone on that side of the room in the dim candlelight. In fact, the long narrow room was bare except for the candle burning on the concrete floor and the two people huddled outside a chalk circle that was drawn on the floor around Harley. Heavy chains stretched across the room from a far wall to where the two people were sitting.

“Batsy? Is that you? Whatcha doing chained up in S.T.A.R. Labs?” Harley said, squinting at the smaller one of the two weirdos.

“We’re not in S.T.A.R. Labs.” Billy Batson stared back at her uncertainly, as if she was the crazy person when he was hiding in a locked archive room of a high-tech research facility in the dead of night. He was holding hands with a dark-haired woman over a chipped saucer that was splattered with what looked a lot like blood. His face was an ashy pale blob in the near darkness, and Harley could barely make out his features which were cast in sharp shadows from the candlelight. She wouldn’t have recognized his voice if she hadn’t spent days ~~obsessing~~ listening to his radio shows so she had known exactly when to kidnap him from the radio station.

“Pfft. Y’think I beat up a buncha rent-a-cops without knowing which building I’m breaking into? You tell him, Dr. Dunkin’ Donuts!” Harley yelled over her shoulder, but when she turned around she was faced with a brick wall behind her. The door had disappeared. The door couldn’t have closed on her with her human-shaped doorstop in the doorway. “Where did the door go?”

Now that Harley was looking, she realized that small animal bones were arranged in neat piles around her. The chalk circle wasn’t made up of a single line but a string of strange symbols that were repeated over and over again. Harley moved her butt and found a many-pointed star drawn over the spot where she had been sitting.

Harley was getting a horror movie vibe from all of this. To be specific, she was getting a vibe that she had walked into the set of a horror movie about a demon-summoning cult and she was the demon that the cult had unwittingly summoned.

“I ain’t sure I like where this movie is going,” Harley complained.

“Did we get it wrong?” Billy said to the woman whose hands he was still holding.

“Magic doesn’t always work the way we expect it to.” The woman was a couple decades too old for Billy. She and Billy were sitting face-to-face. Unlike Billy and the scrappy sweater-and-jeans look he was rocking, she would fit right in with the moneybags crowd at the Gotham Opera Theater in her black tailcoat, red bowtie, gold waistcoat, white gloves and... black fishnet stockings and heels?

“Ow!” Harley exclaimed more out of surprise than pain when a top hat hit her in the head.

The top hat fell into her lap. Harley poked it gingerly. As a former psychiatrist and now fellow cellblock-mate of Jervis a.k.a. the Madhatter, Harley was suspicious of old-fashioned headgears in general. But before Harley could figure out where or who the top hat had come from, the tailcoat lady reached out and swiped the top hat out of Harley’s lap.

“There you are.” The tailcoat lady put on the top hat, which sat snugly on her head. “I wish I could say I meant for it to happen, but Harley Quinn is the last person in the world I expect to drop out of my hat.”

“Ohmigosh!” Harley squealed. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized the Mistress of Mystique, the Magician of Las Vegas, and the one and only Zatanna Zatara! “You didn’t tell me you know Zatanna! What a small world! Me and Zee are best buds!”

Billy looked questioningly at Zatanna, and Zatanna shrugged.

“We talked once after one of my shows in Gotham,” Zatanna said.

“Aw, you remember me! I knew you didn’t lose my number on purpose,” Harley said.

“I remember all my fans who gatecrashed my meet-and-greets, which happens more often than you think,” Zatanna said graciously. “I take it that you know Billy here too?”

“Duh! We’re better than best buds!” Harley declared.

“She kidnapped me once,” Billy said.

“You don’t have to skimp on the details, Batsy. We’re all friends here!” Harley said. “Y’see, I snatched him at the radio station where he worked and parachuted outta a window! I did it in full costume too. White face paint, red clown nose, rainbow wig, the whole shebang! You could see me coming from a mile away!”

“No, I couldn’t. You hit me on the head from behind,” Billy pointed out.

Harley’s face fell. “Are ya mad at me?”

“I missed school and work because I was hospitalized for the head concussion,” Billy said. However, seeing Harley’s head droop like a withering flower, he added, “I watched a Youtube video that ended up on the news. The parachute was pretty cool.”

Harley perked up. “You like it? I made it myself.”

“I think I know why Harley is here,” Zatanna said.

“I can tell you why I’m here. I’m looking for the plants that Red was gushing about, ‘cept you’re here instead of the plants, so either the nerdy twerp in the staffroom was lying to me or S.T.A.R. Labs has booby-trapped their rooms and I’m passed out in S.T.A.R. Labs waiting for B-Man to come pick me up, ” Harley said.

“Not exactly. ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ For the purpose of the spell, the definition of a mutual friend is less precise than we like, but it was enough to bring Harley here,” Zatanna said. She turned her baby blue eyes to Harley, and Harley gotta know how to do that smokey eye makeup because holy smokes it looked amazing. “Will you help us find a way out of this room, Harley?”

“Oh, I see what’s going on,” Harley said. She staggered to her feet and looked wildly around the room. “I’m on TV! Hi, B-Man!”

Billy and Zatanna shared a look. Billy said, “I can’t say anything more other than this is real, Harley, but we’re in a lot of danger. A bad man named Felix Faust has trapped us here.”

“I gotcha. I’m not on Youtube or Facebook either. I’m totally not being pranked.” Harley said in a stage whisper.

“Maybe we can try the spell again,” Billy said to Zatanna while Harley wandered off to explore the room.

Zatanna shook her head. “Faust’s dampening spell is blocking all verbal access to magic. I can’t tap into more of my power without my spoken spells. But there’s something else you can do, Billy.”

“Me? But my magic word isn’t working either,” Billy said.

“Words are powerful but they are just tools. Magic is infused in us. The Wizard gives you the authority to access the lightning, and his name is the key to unlock it,” Zatanna said. “But you don’t always need a key to unlock a door. Let’s try it.”

“You don’t always need a key to unlock a door,” Billy repeated after her.

The room had no door and no window. Harley pressed her ear against the walls to listen for sounds as she knocked on the bricks. They were real bricks alright. No hidden compartments behind the walls. Ever since she had chosen a life of crime, Harley had lived in safehouses and foreclosed houses all around Gotham. Despite the room’s empty and abandoned state, it didn’t smell of dust and mold that Harley would have expected. 

The weirdest thing in the room was the iron chains that chained Billy and Zatanna to the wall. The chains looked like they came straight out of a dungeon under an old-timey motte-and-bailey castle. There were no keyholes on the chains or the cuffs. The cuffs were fitted perfectly around Billy’s and Zatanna’s wrists and ankles like they were molded on their wrists and ankles.

Billy and Zatanna were holding hands with their eyes closed in what looked like a weird two-persons séance. The only candle in the room had been moved into the saucer on the floor between them. Billy’s brows were furrowed. Static crackled in the air. It was like popcorn popping, but instead of butter and salt, the air tasted like ozone. It was like Harley had stuck her head outside a plane miles above ground after a storm.

“You don’t always need a key to unlock a door,” Billy repeated under his breath.

“Sure, you can blow it the heck up too, but only if you don’t plan on living in the house for the next coupla days,” Harley said.

Billy was startled when he opened his eyes and saw Harley staring at him inches away from his face.

“We’re walled in nice and good, boys and girls. So I’m gonna have to borrow your candle for one sec,” Harley said. She pulled out her stick of C4 from her pocket and lit the ridiculously long fuse with the burning candle. “Doncha love watching the little spark of fire run down the fuse?”

“Oh no,” Zatanna said.

“What are you doing, Harley?” Billy said. His eyes grew wide. Zatanna pulled him to the floor.

Harley tossed the C4 to the wall farther away from them, and covered her ears. Her voice sounded muffled and echoey to her own ears as she cackled. “I’m blowing it the heck up!”

The explosion rocked the room. Dust and debris rained down on them. The floor of the previously bare room was now covered in pulverized bricks.

Harley coughed as she inspected the damage. The explosion hadn’t brought the wall down. The wall caved outwards and dirt had poured into the room through the hole in the wall. Harley pried out a few bricks with her bare hands. There were more dirt behind the wall.

“It’s graveyard dirt,” Zatanna said.

“I don’t know, Zee. You’ll have to ask Red about that kinda stuff. It looks like regular dirt to me. What kinda nutso put his prisoners in an underground escape room with no doors?” Harley said. “Usually I just rent a shipping container at the docks. They don’t ask for IDs and no one tries to come into the room to make the bed every morning. ‘Course, there ain’t no bed in the shipping container but that’s beside the point.”

A loud rumble echoed through the room. It shook dust from the ceiling. The floor felt like it was about to crack open and swallow them whole. Billy dropped on all fours. Harley swore she could hear her own teeth rattling in her head. 

“It’s Faust. He’s coming,” Zatanna said, hanging onto her top hat with one hand.

“Who’s what now?” Harley yelled over the noise of her teeth chattering.

“He doesn’t know you’re here. He won’t be expecting you. You can get the drop on him,” Billy said.

A hole opened up in the ceiling. Harley crawled to a corner of the room where she wouldn’t be visible from the hole. She pulled out her rubber chicken and stuffed another brick into it.

A crooked figure dropped into the room from the hole, and then the hole sealed up before Harley could see where it opened up to. Suddenly, Zatanna and Billy were mumbling around gags that had magically appeared in their mouths, which, okay, was a cool magic trick. Harley didn’t even see Zatanna’s hands move.

“What did you do, witch?” the old man said.

“Surprise, muffin fluffer!” Harley swung her rubber chicken at the old man from behind.

The old man snapped his fingers and the rubber chicken flew out of Harley’s hands.

“Hey!” Harley yelled.

The old man turned towards her. His face was gaunt and wrinkly like he had passed his expiration date a few years ago. He was wearing purple tights under his purple night gown. He could pass for one of the insomniac hobos that lived in Robinson Park if he weren’t wearing a purple headdress and a pair of purple pixie boots too.

“Someone should call the fashion police on you,” Harley said.

The old man raised his fist, and threw a fireball at her.

Harley ducked away from the fireball with a backflip. The soles of her boots were singed. “Puh-lease, B-Man coulda dodged that.”

Another fireball flew at Harley. Harley laughed as she cartwheeled across the room. A barrage of fireballs scorched the wall behind her.

“Wheeee! Faster!” Harley yelled.

“Stupid girl. I know who you are. We should be on the same side. They wouldn’t thank you for saving them,” the old man said.

“Watch who you’re calling stupid! You’re talking to Dr. Q, M.D.,” Harley said.

“Is that supposed to impress me?” the old man sneered.

“Yeah, unless you survived four years of med school on a pack of ramen a day too, in which case you wouldn’t be impressed,” Harley said. “But I doubt you know how to tie your shoelaces. That’s why you wear slippers outta your house like a moron!”

“These are not slippers,” the old man growled. The room rumbled again. “You’ll know the power of Felix Faust, clown.”

The floor was cracking. Harley stumbled and almost tripped over her own feet. The next fireball caught her on the back of her jacket. It was like being punched by a flaming golf ball. She had to stop, drop and roll to extinguish the fire before it spread.

Faust laughed, and advanced on Harley. Harley had put out the fire on her back and was lying on her side when Faust leered down at her with a fireball burning in his palm.

“Ain’t you forgetting something?” Harley said.

“What are you talking about?” Faust said.

“Maybe something like the two other people that you’ve locked up in this room?” Harley said.

Billy rammed into Faust’s back. Faust snarled and tried to grab Billy, but then he convulsed like he was being tazed. His limbs locked together and his eyes rolled back into his head. He smelled like ozone and burnt hair. Harley rolled out of the way as Faust faceplanted into the floor. Billy offered his hand to Harley, and pulled her to her feet.

“You have a lotta moxie for a kid your size, Batsy,” Harley said appreciatively.

Billy beamed. His gag was hanging loose around his neck. “It’s not my first rodeo.”

But their triumph was short-lived. Billy’s chains rapidly retracted into the brick wall. Billy was kicking and yelling as he was dragged across the floor by his chains.

“I’m coming for you, Ba-! Whoa!” Harley only felt the cold press of iron cuffs around her wrists and ankles when her world spun and she was suddenly hoisted upwards. She was pinned to the ceiling. All she could see of herself was her pigtails hanging down the sides of her face.

“None of you are going anywhere. Your wild card failed to save you. You’ll sit here idly, while I collect the rest of your friends,” Faust said. He paused. “Wait. Where has the witch g-?”

In retrospect, Harley was glad that Faust had put her on the ceiling. She had the perfect vantage point to watch Zatanna dropkick Faust in the head.

Faust hit the floor hard. When he raised his head, he was bleeding from his mouth. He had split his lip on the floor. Zatanna stood over him, free from her iron cuffs and chains.

Faust spat a mouthful of blood at Zatanna. “Witch! I muted your spells.”

“Not all of my escape tricks are smoke and mirrors, Faust. And neither is this,” Zatanna said. She slammed a brick into the side of Faust’s head. Faust dropped back to the floor in a dead faint.

The cuffs around Harley’s hands and legs unlocked themselves.

“Holy crepe!” One second Harley was stuck on the ceiling, and the next second she was feet away from belly-flopping onto the concrete floor like a raw blueberry pancake making a dive from the pan to the kitchen floor. She twisted her body in mid-air, and broke her fall with a safety roll. She scraped her elbow, and was in good enough shape to stomp over to Faust and kick him in the head. “Take that, douche nozzle!”

Faust flopped limply against the floor. He was out cold, but he would feel that kick when he woke up. 

“Please stop. He’s down, Harley,” Billy said. He had been released from his chains too. He rubbed his bruised wrists.

Harley would’ve beat the crap out of Faust again if he weren’t already out cold. “You’re right. We need to get outta here before his henchmen realize he’s been down here for too long.”

“You have your key back, Billy. Do you think you can get us out of here?” Zatanna said.

“Cap can get us out in a jiffy,” Billy said. “There’s just one little thing.”

Harley looked between Billy and Zatanna. “What are you two staring at me for?”

“I’m sorry, Harley,” Zatanna said, putting her hand over Harley’s. And she did look genuinely sorry, which was a little unsettling. No one ever apologized to Harley. Not her family, for the crap they put her through. Or Joker, for the crap he put her through. Or Batman, for the crap he put her through.

Harley put on her best cutesy smile. “You won’t be sorry if you have dinner with me tonight, sweetie.”

“Yelrah, peels.”

Harley woke up in her cell in Arkham Asylum. Starched bedsheets scratched the ticklish insides of her arms. The ‘HARLEY QUINN HQ’ that she had scribbled in crayon on the ceiling a month ago greeted her like an old friend. 

“Aw, I like that dream!” Harley said, and punched her depressingly flat pillow.

When Harley finally got out of bed, she found a pink rose lying on her writing desk. The stem of the rose was dethorned. Under the rose, was a card with a handwritten message that read, ‘To Harley with thanks, from Zatanna Zatara.’

One week later, the rose looked as good as the day that Harley had seen it. Harley gave the rose to Ivy as a birthday gift. Ivy wouldn’t stop bugging her about where she found a rose that never died, and was more determined than ever to break into S.T.A.R. Labs. As for the card, well, no one had to know Harley kept an autograph of her celebrity crush under her pillow.


End file.
